Do new words propagate like memes? An internet usage-based two-stage model of the life cycle of neologisms

Abstract

Neologisms reflect new ideas or new concepts in our life and play an important role in cultural transmission and the vitality of human language. The explosion of neologisms, especially in the past two decades, can also be ascribed to the popularity and accessibility of digital content and social media. In this paper, we focus on the issue of how neologisms arise by looking at the trajectory of developments in terms of their usage over time, i.e., their life cycle. By studying neologisms in vivo, instead of as fait accompli, we hope to better understand the nature of neologisms and to enable better prediction and earlier inclusion of neologisms. To achieve this goal, we examine the memetic model for the life cycle of neologisms and compare it with a recently studied epidemic model. We present a longitudinal modeling of the development of neologisms based on internet usage data aggregated from Google Trends, covering the 90 most influential Chinese neologisms from 2008–2016. Our study verifies that the memetic model can describe and predict the life cycle of the neologisms robustly for the early stages (i.e., the ascending stages) of its cycle, but not for its full life cycle, and crucially cannot predict the inflection point. We conclude that two models are needed for word propagation: a memetic model for the initial stages and an epidemic model for the latter stage, particularly the inflection point. This two-stage/two-model approach allows for neologisms to be more easily identified as potentially new words, as it is easier to write a program to automatically filter for emerging terms using a memetic model. 流行语反映了我们生活中新思想或新观念的引入，并在文化传播和人 类语言的发展中发挥着重要作用。特别是在过去的二十年里，互联网 的发展和社交媒体的普及为流行语的爆炸式增长提供了土壤。在本文 中，我们通过考察关注流行语如何随时间变化-(即流行语的生命周期) 而考察流行语是如何产生以及发展的。通过将流行语比拟为生命体的 发展，而不是理解为语言中的既成事实，我们希望能够更好地了解流 行语实质的传播模式，从而能够更好地预测流行语的发展。为了实现 这一目标，我们基于模因模型研究了流行语的生命周期，并将其与最 近研究的流行病模型进行了比较。我们选取了 2008–2016 年间 90 个 最具影响力的汉语流行语，并根据谷歌趋势展现的互联网实际使用情 况数据，为新词的发展趋势做了纵向建模。我们的研究验证了模因模 型可以在其周期的早期(即上升阶段)可靠地描述和预测新词的生命 周期，但无法预测其发展的拐点以及整个生命周期。我们因此得出结 论，模拟词汇的传播需要两个模型：初始阶段的模因模型和后期阶段 (尤其是拐点处)的流行病模型。运用这种两阶段/两模型的方法，有助 于在发展初期识别流行语为潜在的新词汇。这是因为模因模型在数学 形式上更简单，有利于编写适用于流行语发展初期阶段的过滤程序 。